


Story of Two Prodigies

by sealament



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, F/M, Romance, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 07:08:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6185401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sealament/pseuds/sealament
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Ultimately, he could have completed the mission, infiltrated the organization, and gathered the necessary intelligence without leaving a mark or succumbing to weakness. She could have fought under May’s tutelage, and levelled the gun at his head without giving it a second thought. But some people are unforgettable, and some irrationalities (attachments, weaknesses), unsurmountable."</p>
<p>Slightly AU. Encompasses all three seasons (mostly).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Story of Two Prodigies

**Author's Note:**

> Something to read before Tuesday comes around and changes everything.

There is only ever one question at the tips of their tongues when they spot each other from a distance, or during their confrontations when each circles the other like two wolves ready to tear apart one another’s soul.

They don’t need to ask how because he’s a Specialist, a darn good one at that, and she’s an unmasked superhero running around from one corner of the world to another, fighting threats until her face is lacerated with myriad little bruises inflicted by her own hand. The same hand that has already caused so many ruins: ruthless jabs and twists of daggers and bayonets in unsuspecting enemies, or disciplined vibrations pulsating to and fro in waves that split molecules and tear down forests. Sometimes he’ll draw blood for her to see. But she never performs any favors in return, or attempts to impress him with the steadiness of her cold fingers as they grip the array of guns her hands have mastered. There is no longer any hesitance-induced sweats or tremors running along her extremities when her finger threads around the unforgiving trigger of a sniper rifle. Her eye is precise and her aim exact; a trained killer like him. Yet there’s still a part of her that believes this unspoken arrangement to be one-sided.

They don’t need to ask when because he knows she’s a brilliant hacker who will always find his sharp jawline on damaged security footage as he ducks behind a dirty convenience store in Hungary; as he pulls out his silencer before nine pairs of nebulous young gazes in a Brazilian favela; or as he flees a Japanese corporate office where an alarm bellows into the stark night. At times he even dares shoot a swift glance at the camera; he never smiles. She, in turn, always leaves subtle traces on every theater of war she destroys that she knows he alone will decipher. As she stands before the enemy, taut and mighty and defiant, it’s more reassuring to believe her agency is taking down those who disrupt world peace and not the other way around. But more often than not, when the evening is quiet and fading, she acknowledges the sheer absurdity and lack of judgement in this conviction. She surmises that he should already have unearthed a decent amount of leftover battlefields where Quake has made an appearance. He must have memorized her combat style from the accumulation of battered cars and torn-through highways: strewn with May’s quickness and effectiveness, Coulson’s rationality and patience, and… his own precision and strategy. He must have recognized in the demolition of a stadium how her capacity to grasp her abilities has evolved. On other occasions, there could have been no doubt in who pulverized an entire Hydra base or a terrorist group compound as he observed with reverence from a mere three hundred feet away. Sometimes, a part of her imagines his lips might have curved ever so slightly with pride.

They don’t need to ask what because he has chased closure since he was all of sixteen, eyes alight with awe before a fire kindled by his own hand. He is certain she understands the concept after retrieving estranged parents in the most unfitting circumstances, and receiving abilities she would never have asked for. When her sources leak grainy pictures of him infiltrating a small, weak Hydra base in New Delhi, he knows that she isn’t flipping through them expecting him to be redeeming himself for her, or for his old team, or even for Kara’s sake. After all these years working under men who threw around orders and underestimated his strength, she understands why he has decided to answer to none other than his own will and sanity. He also knows that on rare occasions, she indulges in momentary relief for this metamorphosis. For her, childhood has instilled a perpetual yearning to belong to something, perhaps some naïve and callow notion of a greater cause which somehow seems deceitfully attainable. But the best way for her to understand the person she is gradually coming to be, the person she was supposed to grow into according to some ill-conceived laws of nature, remains through the performance of smaller deeds and vainglorious crusades many would label as attempts at “the right thing”. And even after him, even after Kyle and Jiaying and endless death tolls that no longer make any sense, she maintains that the world is a black and white canvas where she paints her own strokes of victory. For regardless of the circumstances, helping others has always defined her, even as she sat in her dilapidated van back in the day when everything was simple, and his task within S.H.I.E.L.D found no objections in his conscience. But he isn’t in love with that part of her anymore.

Instead, they ask the questions of the millennia, but never aloud. Always as the night falls, and a few stars draw out the incomprehensible silhouette of an illuminated realm from ages ago. Why does she think she can change the world? Why does a broken man need to run around the continents to feel self-worth when a woman with a fixed face could have loved him enough for the both of them? Why does she stand by a corrupt government agency that leaves behind heaps of corpses and bloodied carnages for others to clean up? Why did he rebuild an organization of his own when it epitomized everything he claimed to stand against? Why did she strike four rounds in his gut instead of just one in his skull? Why did he not put a bullet into her at all?

At the end of the day, she never wonders about his reasons for cleaning up her battlefields, each delicately veiled with her maturing cynicism, as well as shreds of innocent lives laying in unrestful positions which yield no possibility for mourning. And he never truly questions the rationale behind her tracking his moves on a regular basis as he travels the oceans on private security missions, predicting his itinerary before he can even conjure it clearly in his mind. This is a game, and the rules have been laid out in the most implicit manner.

But sooner or later he’ll see her eyes in a crowd, or a flock of silky dark hair will slip between his fingers as he waits in line at a corner café. All the anger that has swollen in his gut over time will melt away in that very instant, disperse like morning dew, until his heart is filled with nothing other than regret, nostalgia, and painful memories of his brother and sister falling to the bottom of the ocean by his own execution. He’ll remember Battleship, and “Bang!”, and how a multitude of pieces solve a puzzle. But suddenly his eyes will shift to the window, only to be met with grey Seattle skies and battered souls meandering around the dirty streets, and he’ll be reminded that nothing can ever be permanent: happiness is ephemeral, for in due time he inevitably filters it down the drain. His eyes will drift back down to his hand resting on a lightly trembling coffee cup, and he’ll know she’s here. Granted, not physically, and not even mentally, but he’ll recognize that his regret is actually her anger, her misunderstanding, and her alleviation at his absence. She is always reaching out to him, even when she doesn’t want to or is unconscious of their link; they are bound by ties that have not been decided by either of them. Ultimately, he could have completed the mission, infiltrated the organization, and gathered the necessary intelligence without leaving a mark or succumbing to weakness. She could have fought under May’s tutelage, and levelled the gun at his head without giving it a second thought. But some people are unforgettable, and some irrationalities (attachments, weaknesses), unsurmountable.

Sometimes he almost chokes when he finds pieces of concrete toppled over civilians amidst bloodbaths of morgue-like peace; where is the girl who embodied clear-cut moral justice? And she, remembering betrayal and insecurity and ages of not being able to distinguish truth from lies (was any of it real?), almost discerns him paving his own redemption, quietly and with no commotion so as not to provoke mocking applause. For she would be the first to raise an eyebrow at his vigilante acts. After all, she doesn’t need his help, doesn’t even want it. Yet he always finds ways to provide intelligence or invisible man power, even after the consistent streak of rejection, after the four bullets gnawing at his insides under San Juan’s scorching sun, and after the death of his lover brought upon indirectly by her people. She can’t possibly believe he still has an interest in seeing her the few times he does come across her from a distance during a mission in Laos, or when they accidentally join forces in Morocco, since these succinct interactions occur on a wide timespan of countless months that eventually stretch into years. And she tries not to notice how her stomach still aches then; perhaps from fear, or some sort of twisted anxiety from thinking he still has reason to hurt her after all this time (Kara, four scars stretching on the abdomen, I will never give you what you want). But she doesn’t let fright retain its grasp on her mind any longer – May taught her to regain peace in a storm and regulate her pulse. And after a while, she feels compelled to concede that a small part of her is pleased to see him alive, that he has still stood his ground after the well, and Garrett, and Vault D, and being expendable to Hydra. For in all the times she wanted him to fall prey to sufferance, she can’t imagine that she’d relish in the sight of his lifeless body.

None of their decisions were simple. But she stands before him now, or rather the carcass of a man she once cared deeply for. And he doesn’t turn at first, doesn’t need to, sensing her unfolded limbs shifting in the leather, her figure elongated into a fully erect position with her feet planted far apart in a play for dominance. It almost impresses him that her pulse is evened out as though they never shared a path of betrayal, contrition but also uncanny parallelism after the fall of their respective ideals and beliefs. There isn’t much left in either of them that remotely resembles the two broken children-turned-adults they were at their first encounter at the foot of her van. That coy smile plastered on her face, the careless roll of her hips as she walked are long gone, washed away with a complicated past. His stoic expression and the occasional ghost of soft eyes have been hardened by the physical scars and mental wounds. And their eyes are void, their stances merciless.


End file.
